OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: From her first day on the job in January 2007 as Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner has acted as if she was bullet proof. To those who found themselves at odds with her proposals or directives in one way or another, she has given no quarter in using the authority of her position as chief election officer more as a political bludgeon than a tool to heal the divides that have opened between her, local boards of elections and the officials that run them and other stakeholders in Ohio's system of elections.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Eric Brown Tuesday dismissed on procedural grounds a case brought by the Union County Commissioners challenging the authority of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to force them and other counties who use touch screen voting machines to also provide a paper ballot to any voter who requests one on March 4th, the date of Ohio’s primary election.

The bellwether case, the first by an Ohio county that challenges Brunner’s authority as elections chief to force Ohio's 88 county boards of elections to have available by November elections paper ballots for any voter who asks for one, is of special interest to the 53 counties who will use electronic touch-screen voting machines as their primary system of voting in a fortnight.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: In the week since Ohio Governor Ted Strickland gave his dazzling but dubious State of the State speech last Wednesday about his plans to create new jobs and commandeer control of the state’s education system, supporters and critics of the proposed $1.7 bond package have been busy working to give it liftoff or shoot it down before takeoff.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Even though Ohio is not among the 24 states whose collective primaries are called Super Tuesday, which some say constitute a national primary, voting news related to the Buckeye State’s primary on March 4th is in the headlines.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: The first financial fallout from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s tie-breaking vote last December took place Thursday, when Cuyahoga County commissioners reluctantly doled out $1.5 million to lease 15 machines that will tabulate and count votes centrally instead of in precincts, as has been standard practice in all previous elections.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Just when you thought the confab and controversy over Ohio’s problem-plagued system of voting was over, a new stew is brewing pitting election-law experts and voting-rights advocates against Ohio’s new chief elections officer, who recently decided to scrap expensive, hackable touch-screen machines in favor of expensive, temperamental optical scanners in the hotspot of Ohio election failures just a few short months before the Buckeye State’s March primary.

OhioNews Bureau

ePluribus Media Ohio News Bureau

ONB Columbus: It’s unfortunate that Ohio had to wait until the November general elections were over before winning a poll-worker training grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts (PCT). The grant initiative will fund an online training program for poll workers and state and local-election officials that will hopefully make them more competent and capable in their jobs on Election Day.